Sweden avoiding lockdown

i_surge

Jessica Swift Bearded wrote: »

You said:-

So, you said New York lost 1 in 350, that's 0.28% of their population.

Our population is 4.9 million. Approximately 30,000 die every year so that's 3 in 500 or 1 in 166 or 0.6% of the Irish population die every year for a variety of reasons.

Potentially in New York a lot of these people would have died this year without Covid. Maybe/probably Covid pushed their deaths forward by a few months, days or years. Maybe a bad flu or cold winter would kill half as many.
I haven't looked at the demographics of New York nor have I looked into many die on average due to flu there.

I'm not saying it isn't sad and I'm not saying that Covid isn't responsible for a lot of death but so does the flu.

1 in 350 dead sounds bad until you compare it to a normal annual death rate of 1 in 166. And yes I know 1/350 wasn't over a year



I agree our approach is poor, its neither one nor the other. Spain is kicking off again.

The problem I have is what happens if you do manage to eliminate Covid. What price would need to be paid and for how long. Do we end up like Albania, shut off from the world?

You're pushing for crushing the virus in another thread so I'll ask the same question:-

What about the Northern Irish border? Its over 300 miles long with multiple roads across it, many which aren't even on the map. The British army tried for years to shut it by blowing up bridges, blocking roads and surveillance. Even then they couldn't stop smugglers and the IRA.

Closing the borders might work for New Zealand because its 4,000 km from the nearest country. But how long do they do this for and what price would there be economically?

I am not qualified in any way to answer that, maybe somebody qualified could answer how the Irish economy would work if it was shut off from the outside world for a few years?

I don't think we'd have any airlines or ferries waiting to start up.


Where are you referring to? The Netherlands? I certainly don't think the US had any coherent strategy which resembled the Swedish approach in any way.

I will simplify. New York was ****ed and you know it.

Certain states ruled lockdown/masks as unconstitutional and paid the price.

You are strawmanning, limiting travel to the truely essential is not cutting the economy off from the world.

Eradication is also the economically optimal approach.

Spain have changed their methodology and are included serological results now. It isn't a step change in cases.

ceadaoin.

theguzman wrote: »

I think we also need to start looking at genetic modification in the human field so that embryos are genetically modified to get rid of undesirable DNA traits, create a vast immunity to a whole host of diseases and to increase the IQ over all.

No, I dont think we need to start looking at that all. A 2 tier society with a superior class immune to a host of illnesses and more intelligent and an underclass of undesirable sickly, dumb people. Maybe those people could be used as spare parts and cheap labour for the superior race. I think I've seen that movie before. What could possibly go wrong?

tobefrank321

Jessica Swift Bearded wrote: »

You see the core of our disagreement on the correct approach is that I don't think this virus is dangerous except for the very old or sick.

I believe Tegnell when he says that they have seen very little repeat infection and that if the healthy can get immunity then the old and the sick could be safe again.

I don't believe the current approach is sustainable and I think we will all see that at the next budget.

Agreed. Just look at the industries destroyed here and elsewhere: pubs, airports, tourism and hospitality, airlines, cruise industry, private buses, taxis, nightclubs and some retail outlets. And the rest are just hanging on. Its not sustainable.

Bit cynical

greyday wrote: »

.. by going your own road you took a risk which you had very little evidence to support, in essence you gambled with peoples lives, that is not what we should expect from our politicians or health service IMO.

However if the road we are going down is the wrong road, the fact that many others are going down it doesn't make it prudent. It could simply be that we're going down the same road because that is the most comforting thing to do for ourselves and others and, in particular, their politicians. The late Brian Lenihan defended government policy on the housing bubble on the basis that the consensus, though incorrect, was that there was no bubble. Even though some people did try to warn about it in advance the warnings were ignored on the basis that they were not the consensus. Going with the consensus got us into one of the largest financial crises in history.

Therefore what we have to do is look at the information that was available at the time before we can decide who is gambling and who is prudent independently of what is the consensus.

bb1234567

Jessica Swift Bearded wrote: »

You said:-

So, you said New York lost 1 in 350, that's 0.28% of their population.

Our population is 4.9 million. Approximately 30,000 die every year so that's 3 in 500 or 1 in 166 or 0.6% of the Irish population die every year for a variety of reasons.

Potentially in New York a lot of these people would have died this year without Covid. Maybe/probably Covid pushed their deaths forward by a few months, days or years. Maybe a bad flu or cold winter would kill half as many.
I haven't looked at the demographics of New York nor have I looked into many die on average due to flu there.

I'm not saying it isn't sad and I'm not saying that Covid isn't responsible for a lot of death but so does the flu.

1 in 350 dead sounds bad until you compare it to a normal annual death rate of 1 in 166. And yes I know 1/350 wasn't over a year



I agree our approach is poor, its neither one nor the other. Spain is kicking off again.

The problem I have is what happens if you do manage to eliminate Covid. What price would need to be paid and for how long. Do we end up like Albania, shut off from the world?

You're pushing for crushing the virus in another thread so I'll ask the same question:-

What about the Northern Irish border? Its over 300 miles long with multiple roads across it, many which aren't even on the map. The British army tried for years to shut it by blowing up bridges, blocking roads and surveillance. Even then they couldn't stop smugglers and the IRA.

Closing the borders might work for New Zealand because its 4,000 km from the nearest country. But how long do they do this for and what price would there be economically?

I am not qualified in any way to answer that, maybe somebody qualified could answer how the Irish economy would work if it was shut off from the outside world for a few years?

I don't think we'd have any airlines or ferries waiting to start up.


Where are you referring to? The Netherlands? I certainly don't think the US had any coherent strategy which resembled the Swedish approach in any way.

Flu and pneumonia kill 4500 in New York annually. New York City is 42% of NY population so presumably 1890 flu/pneumonia deaths in the city annually.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/states/newyork/newyork.htm



Deaths in New York city were 700% above normal in March-June
25,000 excess deaths.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/03/measuring-excess-mortality-gives-clearer-picture-pandemics-true-burden/

There's no downplaying what happened in New York , it was an uniminainable scale of death in 21st century in a western country in a three month period.
If you think it is in any way comparable to what happens even during a bad flu season you are simply misninformed about the situation.

greyday

The IMF and OECD warned the Country had a housing bubble, international experts warned for a number of years and were ignored, your analogy isn't disproving my point in any way, Politicians gambled we didn't have a housing bubbly and a 3 bed semi in Dublin was worth more than a similar property in a good neighbourhood in New York, it didn't end well as we know.

Bit cynical

greyday wrote: »

The IMF and OECD warned the Country had a housing bubble, international experts warned for a number of years and were ignored, your analogy isn't disproving my point in any way, Politicians gambled we didn't have a housing bubbly and a 3 bed semi in Dublin was worth more than a similar property in a good neighbourhood in New York, it didn't end well as we know.

However you were definitely a crank if you tried to point it out in Ireland as some did and, internationally, banks and other financial institutions continued to lend into the bubble. I agree with you that outside the country it may have been easier to see the bubble than from within but I think my point remains that with something as new as Covid-19 there's going to be a tendency to latch on to what others are thinking regardless of the wisdom of so doing. In military psychology this is called group-think and is considered something to be avoided.

FintanMcluskey

Bit cynical wrote: »

In military psychology this is called group-think and is considered something to be avoided.

Following other countries in blind lockdown harmony irrespective of consequences and ignoring the statistics readily available, all the while defending the actions at all costs

i_surge

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

Following other countries in blind lockdown harmony irrespective of consequences and ignoring the statistics readily available, all the while defending the actions at all costs

Or the group think of naively thinking you can go back to normal yesterday because you have "had enough" and "what about the economy?".

That is a faction of the covid groupthink.

Bit cynical

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

Following other countries in blind lockdown harmony irrespective of consequences and ignoring the statistics readily available, all the while defending the actions at all costs

Yes, I think there's a key distinction to be made between the idea of what is prudent and what is politically safe.

Examples of political safety:
1. Doing what others are doing so as not to be left out.
2. Waiting for a pronouncement from an international authority before acting.
3. Treating absence of evidence as evidence of absence.
4. Not acting until there is overwhelming proof that it will work even though the balance of probability is in favour of it and not acting is likely more damaging.
5. Focussing on one number or small set of numbers to the detriment of the bigger picture.

Probably a lot more. It is not about being most likely correct but rather about being personally protected if wrong.

Example of prudence would be
1. Looking objectively at the data and what is currently known without being swayed by others.
2. Being prepared to go with reasonable assumptions and the balance of probability based on the opinion of experts because, in the case of a new phenomenon like Covid-19, there is not going to be definitive proof until too late.
3. Understanding that organizations like the WHO are also subject to group-think and considerations of job safety and are unlikely to give timely advice if there's a remote possibility of being wrong.
4. Considering the long-term sustainability of solutions rather than quick fixes which have no follow-up.

Ha Long Bay

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

Following other countries in blind lockdown harmony irrespective of consequences and ignoring the statistics readily available, all the while defending the actions at all costs

If you were in charge at the time back in March when we had exponential growth of cases what decision would you have made?

Also what statistics were readily available to the decision makers on a new novel virus?

From what I remember at the time all we had were images coming out of Italy of the army being called in to transport coffins from Bergamo which might have influenced the decision to enforce a lockdown.

bb1234567

Well to be fair the lockdown could have been a bit more nuanced..flexible and adaptable. We were well aware of the fact the virus killed mostly people over 70 by the time the outbreak occurred in Europe. I think everyone can agree it was shocking how many elderly people it did kill and so quickly in addition to how infectious it was but still Lombardy has a very old population, some logical thinking would dictate that Ireland with a much smaller elderly population would experience at least a considerably smaller nuber of deaths and so there wasn't the need for some of the regulations introduced, to be introduced so harshly or for as long as they were in place.

Even taking into account the lack of prepation and how unique the situation was, some of the decisions implemented nationally were not excusable.

Schools remaining closed despite it not causing any increase in cases in Europe for months, not acceptable to sit on that for so long.

Cancer screnning being halted, why could they have not been moved to an alternate location, or provided in some kind form. I don't know much about it but I don't accept that COVID prevented any and all form of monitoring of patient cancer progression and treatment and made it impossible to continue.

And a few other decisions, made no sense, didn't help anybody, only caused damage.

At times it felt as if the daily number of cases and deaths on the TV dictated how the country was run. As if there was no room for analysis of where the cases occurred or how, and rather than specifically trying to fix issues associated with certain serial offenders or causes, everybody was balmed, everybody was forced inside, and everyone suffered, when they didn't need to. A strong state influence is need to stop this virus, clearly, but it needs to be a bit smarter and less rigid in it's execution.

Ha Long Bay

bb1234567 wrote: »

Well to be fair the lockdown could have been a bit more nuanced..flexible and adaptable. We were well aware of the fact the virus killed mostly people over 70 by the time the outbreak occurred in Europe. I think everyone can agree it was shocking how many elderly people it did kill and so quickly in addition to how infectious it was but still Lombardy has a very old population, some logical thinking would dictate that Ireland with a much smaller elderly population would experience at least a considerably smaller nuber of deaths and so there wasn't the need for some of the regulations introduced, to be introduced so harshly or for as long as they were in place.

I'm not highlighting this part to be confrontational only just to discuss. Did we really know this in detail in March? I didn't think we knew a lot about the virus until it hit Europe (Italy) from what I can remember.

charlie14

Jessica Swift Bearded wrote: »

A pecentages is a combination of three numbers
The graphs from bit cynical are taking the numbers for Sweden and Ireland to show mortality by percentage for each age group. Its simply visualising the known data.

A model or theory could for example use logistical regression to predict if a person could catch and die from corona virus using variables such as enthnicity, age, weight, housing, health, nationality, climate, season, location etc as predictors in the model. Or linear regression to calculate the likely number of dead. But with all the unknowns I'd assume any such model would just overfit the data.
It would even be a stretch to consider Michael Levitts theory to be a mathematical model in my opinion.



Your euromomo graphs are using maths, z score normalisation for each country to show the deaths. Speaking of which, I assume you didnt get an actual number of excess deaths from that?

Agreed. It is not a model or a theorem.
It is a one off comparison between two countries, and even at that it is only based on a particular age group without any consideration for variables.
What it is not, is what some here were attempting to do.
Use it as proof that lockdown or no lockdown, the same percentagr of over 65`s will die.
Used as it should be, the evidence shows the complete opposite.



There not my euronomo graphs, but what the graph for Sweden shows is that deaths were below the baseline until the beginning of April and by July 17th excess deaths for the period were at least 2,000 higher for a ten year average than reported Covid-19 deaths.
In 7 months their deaths are the total for 8 months of an average year. Again 2,000 over and above Covid-19 deaths.
This is with Winter still to come. A time where another poster has said deaths are higher in Sweden.
Yet you see nothing questionable in those figures ?

bb1234567

john4321 wrote: »

I'm not highlighting this part to be confrontational only just to discuss. Did we really know this in detail in March? I didn't think we knew a lot about the virus until it hit Europe (Italy) from what I can remember.

I followed it since January and I would say that a lot of information was made available on the situation in Wuhan. The profile of victims was well established, we knew that most children were asymptomatic for example, just the fact Italy had such a high number of at risk individuals caused a lot of deaths, which triggered knee jerk reaction globally.

tobefrank321

john4321 wrote: »

If you were in charge at the time back in March when we had exponential growth of cases what decision would you have made?

Also what statistics were readily available to the decision makers on a new novel virus?

From what I remember at the time all we had were images coming out of Italy of the army being called in to transport coffins from Bergamo which might have influenced the decision to enforce a lockdown.

Better protection for nursing homes.
Ban visitors for 3 months.
Better PPE for nursing home staff.
Better separation of covid and non covid wards in hospitals
More education for hospital staff.
And some other measures.
All of these were eventually carried out and may have made a bigger difference than our lockdown.

Ha Long Bay

bb1234567 wrote: »

I followed it since January and I would say that a lot of information was made available on the situation in Wuhan. The profile of victims was well established, we knew that most children were asymptomatic for example, just the fact Italy had such a high number of at risk individuals caused a lot of deaths, which triggered knee jerk reaction globally.

Looking back at the time again in China I don't think there was a whole lot of information available for decision makers in Europe to use. They reported 42 deaths on the 1st March from a population of 1.5 billion people.

Bit cynical

john4321 wrote: »

From what I remember at the time all we had were images coming out of Italy of the army being called in to transport coffins from Bergamo which might have influenced the decision to enforce a lockdown.

True but this is being psychologically influenced by dramatic pictures. And, of course, with all the other countries acting the same way it would have been hard for Ireland to go against the grain even if that might have been better for the country.

However what is being questioned is whether Sweden acted imprudently or not.

What was known before the first death in Ireland, as bb points out, was that it overwhelmingly and disproportionately affected the elderly and those with underlying conditions. We also knew from the extensive testing in South Korea that the overall infection fatality rate was less than 1% at least in that country. These two bits of information suggest a very focussed campaign.

I think as well, some degree of immunity could be reasonably assumed based on other similar viruses. While there is danger in making assumptions, sometimes it is more dangerous not to make them where appropriate.

It seems Sweden acted on these and tailored a solution specific to their own circumstances though they got crucial aspects of the execution wrong. Ireland acting on the same data and assumptions would have come to a different conclusion but I think the overall philosophy would have been the same.

i_surge

Healthcare is the only thing that needs to return to normality. Everything else is a luxury.

FintanMcluskey

john4321 wrote: »

If you were in charge at the time back in March when we had exponential growth of cases what decision would you have made?

Also what statistics were readily available to the decision makers on a new novel virus?

From what I remember at the time all we had were images coming out of Italy of the army being called in to transport coffins from Bergamo which might have influenced the decision to enforce a lockdown.

Almost certain that image was debunked as utter horse**** from facebook, Ill look for the explanation

Ha Long Bay

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

Almost certain that image was debunked as utter horse**** from facebook, Ill look for the explanation

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/covid-19-italy-videos-show-military-fleet-transporting-coffins-of-coronavirus-victims-out-of-overwhelmed-town

Source: Reuters

Bit cynical

john4321 wrote: »

Looking back at the time again in China I don't think there was a whole lot of information available for decision makers in Europe to use. They reported 42 deaths on the 1st March from a population of 1.5 billion people.

But the population of the whole of China is not particularly relevant as Wuhan was already quarantined from the rest of the country.

Ha Long Bay

tobefrank321 wrote: »

Better protection for nursing homes.
Ban visitors for 3 months.
Better PPE for nursing home staff.
Better separation of covid and non covid wards in hospitals
More education for hospital staff.
And some other measures.
All of these were eventually carried out and may have made a bigger difference than our lockdown.

I agree completely with your points and what could have been done better. My own view is we did not have the luxury at the time to implement them for various reasons.

I'm not going to be the guy who breaks down each line with an explanation as I don't appreciate that type of posting but I think our primary focus at the time was the general population and overwhelming the healthcare system.

FintanMcluskey

john4321 wrote: »

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/covid-19-italy-videos-show-military-fleet-transporting-coffins-of-coronavirus-victims-out-of-overwhelmed-town

Source: Reuters

You are completely correct here, was a different one on facebook that was taken in France but posted as Italy

bb1234567

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

Almost certain that image was debunked as utter horse**** from facebook, Ill look for the explanation

It's not horse ****, Bergamo with a population of 1.1 million experienced 6120 extra deaths in an 8 week period. 0.56% of the entire metropolitan area population. 1 in every 178 people in the city died in March and April this year on top of those who normally die.

https://www.newsworthy.se/en/dashboard/newslead/49905/

So really we have posters trying now to make out somehow that New York and Lombardy did not experience astoundingly high excess deaths. Nobody agrees with this, the thing that is annoying people, all over the world, is that we were made believe these places would be the rule, not the sort of exceptions that they were. Lots of places had high deaths, relatively few plafes worldwide have reaches levels anywhere as high as NYC or Lombardy. But again, seriously nobody is arguing at all that deaths in NYC or Lombardy were not high, they are exactly why the world was scared into compliance with lockdowns, that says it all.

Ha Long Bay

Bit cynical wrote: »

But the population of the whole of China is not particularly relevant as Wuhan was already quarantined from the rest of the country.

That's still a population twice the size of Ireland with limited information coming out about what was happening.

All I am trying to say is the first time Europe got to have an idea of the potential of the virus in reality was when it unfortunately hit Italy and based the decisions from that.

Ha Long Bay

FintanMcluskey wrote: »

You are completely correct here, was a different one on facebook that was taken in France but posted as Italy

Thanks for acknowledging the mistake most people would ignore and move on.

I'm not here looking for conflict just to discuss the situation and what we can learn from Sweden's approach, but also I think it's unfair to think Ireland's approach was heavy handed or over the top with limited facts and resources.

It's easier looking back with hindsight just trying to show the other side of the story of what was happening around us at the time.

nw1dqsv7amx026

bb1234567 wrote: »

Flu and pneumonia killed 4500 in New Yorkers in 2017, one of the worst flu seasons in recent history. New York City is 42% of NY population so presumably 1890 flu/pneumonia deaths in the city that year.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/states/newyork/newyork.htm

....

It still sounds really bad given that instead because you have half of those deaths occurring from one main cause of death in a 3 month period vs dozens of causes over 12 months usually

Absolutely it is bad, assuming the numbers are correct, using your figures, 0.05% for a bad flu season v 0.28% for Covid.

But, if the choice was to live with a 0.28% chance of death, I would live. I don't like the Irish alternative. The Swedish option (the point of this thread) is maybe a middle ground.

nw1dqsv7amx026

john4321 wrote: »

If you were in charge at the time back in March when we had exponential growth of cases what decision would you have made?

Also what statistics were readily available to the decision makers on a new novel virus?

From what I remember at the time all we had were images coming out of Italy of the army being called in to transport coffins from Bergamo which might have influenced the decision to enforce a lockdown.

This is a fair point and you can't blame them for how they acted then.

But once the danger (or lack of) became obvious they should have changed course. I genuinely believed that they would change course back in May/June. But instead they doubled down.
I naively didn't consider that these politicians are not ready to retire so couldn't admit to choosing the wrong path and have a legacy of wasting some much money.

MadYaker

Jessica Swift Bearded wrote: »

This is a fair point and you can't blame them for how they acted then.

But once the danger (or lack of) became obvious they should have changed course. I genuinely believed that they would change course back in May/June. But instead they doubled down.
I naively didn't consider that these politicians are not ready to retire so couldn't admit to choosing the wrong path and have a legacy of wasting some much money.

It’s amazing how many experts there are on boards that know better than a team of scientists and doctors with hundreds of collective years experience.